Russian President Vladimir Putin with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before leaving the arrival area during the official welcome ceremony on day one of the G20 Turkey Leaders Summit on November 15 in Antalya, Turkey.
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MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he saw "no prospect" of improving relations with the current leadership of Turkey after it downed a Russian jet bomber last month.

"It is hard for us to reach agreement with the current Turkish leadership, if at all possible," Putin said during his annual news conference. Putin said the downing of the Russian warplane was "an act of enmity" and he did not understand why Turkey did it.

"What have they achieved? Maybe, they thought that we would run away from there (Syria)? But Russia is not such a country."

The Russian president then said Turkey "decided to lick the Americans in a certain place," the BBC reports.

Ankara has signaled that it would like to reconcile its relationship with Moscow, which took a steep downturn after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last month. Turkish officials, however, have said their patience "has a limit."

"Russia and Turkey certainly have to reestablish the relations of trust that we have always had, but our patience has a limit," Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, recently told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Putin also reportedly said Turkey "stabbed us in the back with this incident."